TheReligiousLeft.org

Monday, April 16, 2012

Looking back at my research and writing on conservative special
interest-driven policies, a common denominator emerges – without
exception. Regardless of the area (opposing reform of our gun markets
while expanding public exposure to weaponry; opposing healthcare reform;
continued support for financial deregulation and supply-side tax
policies; discriminatory treatment of the LGBT community; and another to
be included in this article, science denial regarding global warming),
all are continuing to be pursued despite the well-documented, and often
substantial, loss of American lives. And in some cases, e.g., our gun
market and global warming, the loss of life extends beyond our borders.

With politicians reliant upon special-interest donations to keep
their jobs (campaign spending is strongly linked to winning), as well as
needing to energize segments of their base to secure votes at the
polls, it is the interfacing of business, lawmakers, and lobbyists that
has proven to be a deadly mix – in every sense of the phrase.

A synopsis of each of the above mentioned special interest-driven
areas follows. Links to previously posted, referenced, articles are
provided for each issue and have been supplemented, where appropriate,
in the text.

NY City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has noted that more than 400,000
Americans have died in gun violence since the 1960s – more than the
number of Americans who died during World War II (ref).
This loss of American life dwarfs that seen in other developed
countries. In one year gun-related homicides totaled 17 in Finland, 35
in Australia, 39 in England and Wales, 60 in Spain, 194 in Germany, 200
in Canada, and 9484 in the United States (ref).
Gun-related deaths in the US contribute about 25% to the lower
life-expectancy of Americans vs. peer countries, and in children less
than 15 years of age the gunfire death rate was shown to be almost 12
times that of 25 other industrialized countries combined. Yet
politicians, largely on the right, either oppose, or enact, legislation
that not only continues, but contributes to this travesty. This while a
recent Reuters/Ipsos poll (ref) shows
that a strong majority of Americans support laws limiting the sale of
automatic weapons (74%) and requiring background checks (91%) before
allowing the sale of firearms.

The solution put forth by the gun lobby (the NRA is linked to the gun
industry both through its board membership as well as financial
contributions it receives) is to increase public exposure to weaponry,
i.e., the right to defend ourselves from the consequences of a gun
market they resist changing. A gun market that readily makes weaponry
available to criminals, the mentally-ill, drug traffickers and
terrorists. A gun market that financially benefits the very
corporations that support the NRA’s lobbying efforts.

The loss of life also extends beyond our borders into Mexico where
tens of thousands of individuals have been killed at the hands of
heavily armed drug cartels. Mexican President, Felipe Calderon, has
called for the reinstatement of the assault weapons ban in the US,
citing that its expiry in 2004 “coincided almost exactly with the
beginning of the harshest – the harshest – period of violence we’ve ever
seen” (ref). The ATF estimates that 80% of the weapons confiscated from these cartels are supplied through our markets.

And politicians who receive donations from the NRA (89% to
Republicans where the ‘gun rights’ crowd largely resides) continue to
enact, or oppose, legislation that propagates the way our gun markets
operate; to the financial benefit of the gun industry and at the expense
of citizen lives both here and across our borders.

A Harvard Medical School study estimated that the lack of access to
essential medical care in our country results in a loss of 45,000
American citizens every year, including over 2000 military veterans.
And yet Americans are paying more for healthcare and have shorter
longevity than those in other developed nations; the reason being
attributed to the lack of what other countries have – an effective
government mechanism that acts to keep prices down (ref).
And when Republicans controlled both houses and the presidency for
six years (2001 – 2006), not one piece of legislation was put forward to
address this issue, and they now stand united in opposing the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.

American citizens who are denied access to healthcare due to
pre-existing conditions, lack of affordability, dropped coverage, etc.,
are required to pay taxes that support the government-provided
healthcare benefits of politicians who, in turn, deny the same to them.
This after our lawmakers receive substantial sums of special interest
money to oppose reform, and despite the loss of tens of thousands of
American lives each year due to the way our health insurance market
operates.

An outcome of the spectacular failure of financial deregulation
policy (a failure that Alan Greenspan testified left him in a state of
‘shocked disbelief’) was a marked increase in American poverty. Poverty
carries with it a mortality rate. A Columbia University School of
Public Health study estimated that in 2000 875,000 Americans lost their
lives due to a cluster of social factors bound up with poverty and
income inequality. Extrapolating to the increased poverty resulting
from the recent economic collapse, in 2009 the estimated deaths would
sit at 1,228,169, an estimated annual
increase of 350,000 lost American lives since 2000. And yet, despite
the damaging effect financial deregulation policy has had on the vast
majority of the American public (lost employment, devalued property and
retirement accounts, increased poverty) politicians, largely on the
right, continue to oppose financial reforms while at the same time
receiving special-interest donations from ‘Wall Street’, and Super Pacs
funded by the wealthy, that benefit from deregulation policy.

Supply-side tax policy, largely benefitting the wealthiest, has
contributed to more and more income and wealth being pushed into the
uppermost sliver of the American population, while income in our broad
economic engine, the middle class, has not kept pace with the growth of
our economy. In both instances where 1% of the American public held 24%
of this nation’s income a major economic collapse followed (The Great
Depression and the Great Recession); not surprising as the largest
single component of our economy is personal consumption (70%). The
decreased purchasing power of the middle class, combined with debt
accumulation as a coping factor, contributed to the economic collapse,
the loss of employment that increased poverty, and thus lost American
lives.

Despite the wealthiest in America paying proportionately less total
income tax than the middle class, Republican lawmakers vehemently oppose
reinstating tax policy that helped produce balanced budgets, national
debt reduction, strong economic growth, strong job creation, and reduced
levels of poverty, while at the same time calling for cuts to safety
net programs (food stamps, heating subsidies) that victims of the
recession, the impoverished, relied upon.

Analysis published by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) shows
that homosexuals are 2.4, 2.6, 4.4, 13.8 and 41.5 times as likely as
Jews, blacks, Muslims, Latinos and whites, respectively, to be the
target of violent hate crime attack. And yet the conservative majority
in the NC legislature has placed on this May’s primary ballot a
constitutional amendment that would require the state to legally
recognize only one union, a marriage between one a man and one woman.
At the heart of this amendment is much religious fervor that describes
homosexuals as sinners and gay marriage as an assault on God’s holy
institution.

The Family Research Council (FRC) and the American Family Association
(AFA), both supporters of the amendment, have been labeled as hate
groups by SPLC, not because of religious opinion regarding
homosexuality, but because of their continuing issuance of known
falsehoods that reinforce unfounded fears and bigotry about this segment
of our citizenry. And yet, NC House Majority Leader Skip Stam (R), a
supporter of the amendment who likened same-sex marriage to polygamy and
adult incest, agreed to be interviewed on AFA radio with the presidents
of both organizations.

Once the religious objections to homosexuality are removed, there is
nothing of substance left as was demonstrated in California’s Prop 8
trial (Perry v Schwarzenegger) where 17 expert witnesses debunked
multiple falsehoods and fears about same sex unions. Yet, in pandering
to the wishes of the Christian right, an influential part of the
conservative majority’s base, politicians in NC are not only mocking our
constitution’s Establishment Clause, but are also lending credence to
the falsehoods issued about this segment of our citizenry that
contribute to lost lives either directly through acts of violence or by
suicide following unrelenting bullying and ostracization.

Global Warming

There is strong consensus in the scientific community that humans are
playing a role in increasing our planet’s temperature and that we are
dangerously close, perhaps within a decade, of reaching tipping points
where global warming will become irreversible. The result is
anticipated to be as much as a 6 degree increase in this planet’s
temperature by the end of this century (ref).

As the world population grows and more countries are developing,
there are increasing amounts of greenhouse gases being emitted into the
atmosphere by the burning of carbon-based fuels. The heat trapped by
these emissions is leading to a melting of ice and permafrost around the
planet that results in the release of methane, a more potent greenhouse
gas than carbon dioxide. At the same time, vegetation on this planet
is being systemically destroyed both by both climate change and
development. In Brazil, for example, the Amazon rain forest that is
currently a carbon sink (and supplies 20% of this planet’s oxygen) is
being systematically destroyed by development; and, should tipping
points be exceeded, climate change could turn this rain forest into a
carbon emitter further accelerating the process.

Yet, despite the scientific evidence and these grave concerns that
have been well publicized, Big Oil remains a powerful lobbying force in
Washington. Regarding legislation intended to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions, Michelle Bachman (as an example) denied the science and
stated that she wanted her constituents “armed and dangerous” and ready
to fight a “revolution” against the President’s Cap and Trade plan (ref).
And is Rush Limbaugh really listened to as an authoritative source
when he states that global warming is a hoax, an attempt to ‘codify
liberalism as science’ (ref)?
Recently published international opinion is that America’s position on
climate change is ‘a tragedy’ and that the US is losing its leadership
prestige (ref).

Discussion

In product benefit-risk analysis, death is the very first stopping
point in evaluating risk. It is considered a ‘hard endpoint’, readily
measured, and is the penultimate negative outcome. In a previous
article (ref)
I applied that principle to the gun debate where there is a
considerable loss of life associated with the product outside of its
intended purpose with little evidence of an off-setting benefit, thus
making the argument for regulatory intervention.

In this article I expanded the scope by applying that principle to
examine multiple special interest-driven areas. Using death as an
outcome measure, it is clear that the political right is continuing to
pursue policies that have been documented to produce an often
substantial, and unnecessary,
loss of American lives. Policies that fatten their coffers with
special interest donations that help secure their position, and policies
that energize segments of their base in return for votes at the polls.
And as our government is empowered by our constitution to enact laws to
promote the general welfare of the people, it draws into serious
question how our government is operating and who/what it is actually
beholden to.

The issue of death separating the left and right can be found in the
very language that the two sides issue. Regarding guns, healthcare
reform, and discriminatory treatment of LGBT’s for example, the left
speaks in terms of the loss of life and discriminatory treatment that
contributes to death, while the right issues ideologically-based
statements such as our Constitutional right to bear arms, we are
becoming a socialist country, and we must protect our holy institution
of marriage and stop the moral degradation of our country. And there is
a reason for this.

Campbell and Putnam’s research (ref)
has shown that the current hard right movement in America that drove
the 2010 mid-term elections, the Tea Party, is ideologically driven.
The strongest predictor of becoming a Tea Party supporter was
previously being a highly partisan Republican. The movement is
overwhelmingly white, has a low regard for immigrants and blacks, are
disproportionately social conservatives, and they wish to see religion
play a prominent role in politics (the second greatest predictor). So,
it is not about ‘smaller government’ with the rank and file of this
crowd. In fact, it would have been these same individuals that in 2000
voted away the very things they say they now want (balanced budgets and
surpluses, pay down of our debt, strong job creation, smaller government
workforce, etc) in return for the same tax and economic policies that
had already been shown to produce debt at a rate faster than the growth
of our economy (ref).

Thus this movement becomes easy prey to manipulation, especially
during this era of 24/7 television punditry where polling showed the
majority of them watched the Fox News Channel as their primary news
source and viewed Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck as actual news shows
rather than entertainment (questions 95 and 96).
They are driven to the polls to pull the lever opposing such things
abortion, healthcare reform, and same sex marriage. But with few
understanding the inter-relationships between tax policy/financial
policy/economic growth/job creation here at home/debt, they also wind up
pulling the lever against not only their own financial self-interests,
but the well-being of many of their fellow citizens as well. Money and
power once again have their day through manipulation and at the expense
of American lives.

And is there any wonder why the right has an interest in defunding public education?

Arthur R. Kamm, PhD (Dr. Art Kamm) has devoted his career to the study of patient populations and the research and development of treatments to alleviate pain, suffering, improve quality of life, and save lives. His blog is dedicated to his study of many topics including, but not limited to, debt, deficits, economy, leadership, healthcare, climate, politics, hunger, intolerance, etc. The intent is to disseminate information and open dialogue based upon consideration of information rather than spin.